Antoninus Pius Totally Explained

Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus Pius (September 19, 86–March 7 161) was Roman emperor from 138 to 161. He was the fourth of the Five Good Emperors and a member of the Aurelii. He didn't possess the sobriquet "Pius" until after his accession to the throne. Almost certainly, he earned the name "Pius" because he compelled the Senate to deify Hadrian.

Early life

Childhood and family

He was the son and only child of Titus Aurelius Fulvus, consul in 89 whose family came from Nemausus (modern Nîmes) and was born near Lanuvium and his mother was Arria Fadilla. Antoninus’ father and paternal grandfather died when he was young and he was raised by Arrius Antoninus, his maternal grandfather, a man of integrity and culture and a friend of Pliny the Younger. His mother married to Julius Lupus (a man of consular rank) and bore him a daughter called Julia Fadilla.

Marriage and Children

As a private citizen between 110–115, he married Annia Galeria Faustina the Elder. They had a very happy marriage. She was the daughter of consul Marcus Annius Verus and Rupilia Faustina (a half-sister to Roman Empress Vibia Sabina). Faustina was a beautiful woman, renowned for her wisdom. She spent her whole life caring for the poor and assisting the most disadvantaged Romans.
Faustina bore Antoninus four children, two sons and two daughters. They were:

Marcus Aurelius Fulvius Antoninus (died before 138), his sepulchral inscription has been found at the Mausoleum of Hadrian in Rome.
Marcus Galerius Aurelius Antoninus (died before 138), his sepulchral inscription has been found at the Mausoleum of Hadrian in Rome. His name appears on a Greek Imperial coin.
Aurelia Fadilla (died in 135), she married Lucius Lamia Silvanus, consul 145. She appeared to have no children with her husband and her sepulchral inscription has been found in Italy.
Annia Galeria Faustina Minor or Faustina the Younger (between 125-130-175), a future Roman Empress and married her maternal cousin, future Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. She was the only child that survived to adulthood.

When Faustina died in 141, he was in complete mourning and did the following in memory of his loving wife:

Deified her as a goddess.

Had a temple built in the Roman Forum in her name, with priestesses in the temple.

Had various coins with her portrait struck in her honor. These coins were scripted ‘DIVA FAUSTINA’ and were elaborately decorated.

He created a charity which he founded and called it Puellae Faustinianae or Girls of Faustina, which assisted orphaned girls.

Created a new alimenta (see Grain supply to the city of Rome).

Favour with Hadrian

Having filled with more than usual success the offices of quaestor and praetor, he obtained the consulship in 120; he was next appointed by the Emperor Hadrian as one of the four proconsuls to administer Italia, then greatly increased his reputation by his conduct as proconsul of Asia. He acquired much favor with the Emperor Hadrian, who adopted him as his son and successor on February 25, 138, after the death of his first adopted son Lucius Aelius, on the condition that he himself would adopt Marcus Annius Verus, the son of his wife's brother, and Lucius, son of Aelius Verus, who afterwards became the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus (colleague of Marcus Aurelius).

Emperor

On his accession, Antoninus' name became "Imperator Caesar Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pontifex Maximus". One of his first acts as Emperor was to persuade the Senate to grant divine honours to Hadrian, which they'd at first refused; his efforts to persuade the Senate to grant these honours is the most likely reason given for his title of Pius (dutiful in affection; compare pietas). Two other reasons for this title are that he'd support his aged father-in-law with his hand at Senate meetings, and that he'd saved those men that Hadrian, during his period of ill-health, had condemned to death. He built temples, theaters, and mausoleums, promoted the arts and sciences, and bestowed honours and salaries upon the teachers of rhetoric and philosophy.
His reign was comparatively peaceful; while there were several military disturbances throughout the Empire in his time, in Mauretania, Iudaea, and amongst the Brigantes in Britannia, none of them are considered serious. The unrest in Britannia is believed to have led to the construction of the Antonine Wall from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde, although it was soon abandoned. He was virtually unique among emperors in that he dealt with these crises without leaving Italy once during his reign, but instead dealt with provincial matters of war and peace through their governors or through imperial letters to the cities such as Ephesus (of which some were publicly displayed). This style of government was highly praised by his contemporaries and by later generations.
Of the public transactions of this period we've scant information, but, to judge by what we possess, those twenty-two years were not remarkably eventful in comparison to those before and after his; the surviving evidence isn't complete enough to determine whether we should interpret, with older scholars, that he wisely curtailed the activities of the Roman Empire to a careful minimum, or perhaps that he was uninterested in events away from Rome and Italy and his inaction contributed to the pressing troubles that faced not only Marcus Aurelius but also the emperors of the third century. German historian Ernst Kornemann has had it in his Römische Geschichte [2vols., ed. by H. Bengtson, Stuttgart 1954] that the reign of Antoninus comprised "a succession of grossly wasted opportunities," given the upheavals that were to come. There is more to this argument, given that the Parthians in the East were themselves soon to make no small amount of mischief after Antoninus' passing. Kornemann's brief is that Antoninus might have waged preventive wars to head off these outsiders. Conversely, Ivar Lissner [Powerand Folly; The Story of the Caesars, Jonathan Cape Ltd., London 1958] has written, "...[AntoninusPius] lived 'with his head in the clouds where external affairs were concerned'... however, I think it's unfair to criticize him for that. Every monarch or statesman who genuinely believes in the possibility of lasting peace and wishes to spare his people bloodshed does, fundamentally, live with his head in the clouds... for all that, his name makes less impact on the memory than that of such members of the imperial rogues' gallery as Nero or Domitian." The debate will no doubt continue. He maintained good relations with the Senate (in contrast to Hadrian).

Death

After the longest reign since Augustus, Antoninus died of fever at Lorium in Etruria, about twelve miles from Rome, on March 7 161, giving the keynote to his life in the last word that he uttered when the tribune of the night-watch came to ask the password — "aequanimitas" (equanimity). His body was placed in Hadrian's mausoleum, a column was dedicated to him on the Campus Martius, and the temple he'd built in the Forum in 141 to his deified wife Faustina was rededicated to the deified Faustina and the deified Antoninus.

Historiography

The only account of his life handed down to us is that of the Augustan History, an unreliable and mostly fabricated work. Antoninus is unique among Roman emperors in that he's no other biographies. Historians have therefore turned to public records for what details we know.

In later scholarship

Antoninus in many ways was the ideal of the landed gentleman praised not only by ancient Romans, but also by later scholars of classical history, such as Edward Gibbon or the author of the article on Antoninus Pius in the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica:

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